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ADDRESS 



MUSIC HALL, CINOITsrjSTATI, OHIO, 



ON THE OCCASION OF THE REMOVAL OF THE REMAINS OF 



SALMON P, CHASE 



SPRINO OROVE CEMETERY, 



Thursday, Oclober 14, 1886, 



BY 

GEORGE IIOADLY. 



CINCINNATI: 
EOBEET CLAEKE & CO. 

1887. 



ADDRESS. 



Ladies and Gentlemen: 

We to-day lay to rest the earthly casket in -which found ex- 
pression and took form the high thoughts and loving emotions 
of one who was very dear to us, of the patriot, philanthropist, 
statesman, and magistrate, whose memory the American people 
Avill never suffer to fade. We shall place him beneath the 
soil of the beautiful cemetery of Spring Grove, whose early 
friend and zealous defender, in the halls of justice, he was ; 
within sound of the turmoil and sight of the smoke of the great 
city in Avliich he never relinquished legal residence, and never 
abandoned the right to vote, in whose municipal legislature he 
bestowed valued service in days when civic duty was held in 
higher esteem than now; within the State which four times se- 
lected him for exalted service, twice as Governor and twice as 
Senator. 

The wish of those whose will is law here assigns to me the 
office of speech. This can not be declined. The honor is 
great, the gratification extreme, to be permitted to express 
the grateful sense of obligation felt by his younger friends, 
by those of us ayIio 

" Loved him so, followed him, honored hito, 
Lived in his mild and mngnificent e}-e, 
Learned his <:reat lan;iuaj;o, cau^iht iiis clear accenlp, 
' Made liim our pattern to live and to die." 

But I can not do the work of the historian or the critic. I 
must speak, if at all, of one who was my preceptor, master. 



partner, friend, only in words of sorrow, or of eulogy, as his 
loving disciple. 

Sixty years ago Salmon P. Chase left Dartmouth College, 
and, after a brief interval spent at Washington in teaching and 
in the study of tlie law, came to Cincinnati to seek a home. 
He essayed to found a family, he sought happiness in matri- 
mony, but it was ordained by higher powers that this should 
not be lastina;. Two dauo;hters alone remained to be the 
solace and the care of his Avidowed life. Thenceforward he 
must look for pleasure to his duty. To its performance few 
men have brought richer endowments of preparation. 

Deeply-seated religious convictions, much study of the 
sacred books in more than one language, Avith a quick con- 
science, made him a Christian. A scholar carefully trained, 
loving scholarship for its own sake as well as for its uses, a 
skilled lawyer, not only learned in tlie books of legal princi- 
ples, familiar Avith the reports of precedents, conversant with 
the written legislation and public history of his State, the edi- 
tor of its laAvs and recorder of its annals, he was also an 
active practitioner, diligent in the courts as well as in the 
library, the associate of men as Avell as of books, rich in re- 
sources, ready for action, an adept in all the honorable meth- 
ods Avhich lead to professional success. 

Tall, dignified, of commanding presence, benign in expres- 
sion, gentle in speech, sweet voiced, thinking kindly and 
never speaking harshly of men or motives, manly in seeming 
and in fact, brave, truthful and just in Avord and Avork, Avin- 
ning in manners, this man seemed called by nature to great 
personal popularity. And this indeed he enjoyed in early and 
later life, but for many intervening years failed to hold. When, 
forty years ago, I entered his ofiice as student of the laAV, he 
was the most unpopular man in Cincinnati. True, his domes- 
tic sorrows had made him grave and reserved — had AvithdraAvn 



him for the time from social intercourse and pleasures. This 
does not account for his isolation. He was a candidate that 
autumn for Congress, but received only five hundred votes. 
Cincinnati, which had welcomed him at first with open arms, 
petted and praised him, encouraged the brilliant young lawyer, 
conferred on him civic honors, brought work to his office, 
trusting business to his willing and eager care, now averted 
her face, having become an angry stepmother. 

Nine years later, after he had served a term in the Senate, 
at the election of 1855, Avhen he was chosen Governor by 
15,000 majority in the State, the first candidate of a new party, 
a full-blooded, zealous, intensely hopeful party, he was, in his 
own home, where he had then lived for twenty-five years, not 
first, nor even second in the list, beaten by the Democrat, 
Medill, by 10,000, by the Know Nothing, or American, Trim- 
ble, 2,000, his name came from the ballot-boxes of Hamilton 
county with a beggarly tale of 4,500 votes. A single sentence 
explains the mystery : He Avas an Abolitionist, and Cincin- 
nati a suburb of the South. Without railroad connections, 
removed by bad roads and long distances from the North, 
seated upon a river which gave free access and easy com- 
merce with all the South, the intellectual life of this city Avas 
long dominated by the slaveholding caste. For its favor, in 
espousal of its threatened interests, presses Avere destroyed 
and free negroes mobbed. Politically the voters Avere divided 
into tAvo classes — Democrats, avIio felt bound, in conscience 
and in laAV, by the iron chains of constitutional compromise, 
and worshipers of Henry Clay. Yes, the Avord is not too 
strong to describe the devotion of the Whio;s of Cincinnati to 
their chief: — Avorshipers of Henry Clay — such of them as dis- 
liked slavery, of whom there Avere many, fearful, anxious that 
this should not be so manifested as to hurt their party or its 
leader. 



6 

And Chase was no recluse, no book-worm, no merely philo- 
sophic, speculative Abolitionist, He was an active, aggressive 
politician. He believed in work and in methods ; believed in 
parties, committees, machinery, organization, in newspapers, 
speeches, letters, persuasion ; in short, in every species of 
ao-itation. He was no apostle of non-resistance or submis- 
sion, but a propagandist of political war. To Avork within the 
Constitution Avas to him a duty and a pleasure. He believed 
in the Union and in tlie Constitution — the one was not to him 
a "leao-ue with hell," nor the other a '"covenant with deatli." 
They were the legal frame-work of a free Republican system, 
under whose ;\?gis might, ought, and in time Avould and must 
dwell none but free people. 

For he saw, with prophetic vision, that slavery must expand 
or die ; that it could live profitably only on virgin soil, and 
that he who should succeed in arresting its territorial exten- 
sion would be its destroyer. This task, I Ijelieve, he was am- 
bitious and hopeful enough to assign to himself; this glory I 
know he coveted. The dream of his earlier political life and 
the spur of his incessant effort, until the Avar opened the Avay 
to a more speedy, a sharper and more effectual traverse to the 
o-reat end, Avere the hope of the abolition of slavery, not by 
direct emancipatory vote or step, Avhich seemed then impossi- 
ble, but by the check of its growth, and consequent decay and 

death. 

For Chase Avas a lawyer, and in the Constitution he read the 
charter of freedom. No judge of later days, helping Virginia 
to scale her debt by the processes of the Riddleberger bill, 
more vigorously accentuated, emphasized Avith more bold un- 
derscorino-, the relation of the amendments to the Constitution 
itself. They Avere to him the " hitherto shalt thou come and 
no further, and here shall thy proud Avaves be stayed " of pop- 
ular mandate ; the impenetrable wall, the protecting mountain 



no hostile foot could ever pass, set to guard the sacred asylum 
of liberty. Whatever might have been argued of the body 
of the Constitution, to his mind it was clear that the Jeffer- 
sonian amendments were the supreme and righteous law of the 
land, binding the conscience of every citizen, in the interest 
of liberty, as the latest and therefore most authoritative fiat of 
the governing power. 

And ot these amendments that which more than any other, 
(if this may be said), claimed his allegiance and evoked his en- 
thusiastic energy, to him the corner-stone of American law 
and liberty, was the tenth : 

'' The poAvers not delegated the United States by the Con- 
stitution nor proliil)ited by it to the States are reserved to the 
States respectively or to the people." 

TTad he lived lono;er his views of Congress over the cur- 
rency might not have prevailed, in the courts ; doubtless they 
would not, as soon as this. Before he died, his oAvn clear judg- 
ment of the incapacity of Congress to make any thing but 
gold and silver legal tender had been overruled by the maior- 
ity of his judicial associates ; but with Chase a just battle, 
however adversely its tides might run, was never fought out 
until the attainment of the right result. One thing is certain, 
had he lived, he would have met Avith indignant protest, founded 
on the very letter of the tenth amendment, the modern heresy 
that the Federal Government may exercise poAvers not Avrit- 
ten, not siranted, not suggested in the Constitution other than 
as they may be deduced by judicial philosophers from the fact 
that tlic Constitution creates a government, and be supposed 
by fcAV. or many to be essential to it as a government, though 
not granted or derived by necessary implication from granted 
poAvers. 

This amendment made him a States' Rights man, a strict 
constructionist, but ahvays a strict constructionist in the in- 



8 

terests of liberty. Another Senator from Ohio was once de- 
scribed as having the quickest eye in the United States to 
see that there was no seal on the mittimus which committed 
his client to jail. Of Chase, it might as truthfully be said 
that he would 1)e tlie first to find any infringement of the 
essential princi})les of American liberty and the equal rights 
of man in the imprisonment of a client. To him the right to 
govern the District of Columbia and the Territories seemed to 
have been given in terms to Congress — but the declared ob- 
jects of the Constitution being to " establisli justice, 
promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of lib- 
erty to ourselves and our posterity " — and the right to intro- 
duce slavery not given — slavery could not lawfully exist in 
the District,* nor claim the benefits of territorial expansion. I 
do not deny that this construction was agreeable to Mr. Chase. 
It reconciled the sense of his duty as a citizen to take a stir- 
ring part in public affairs with his conscience. Over the door 
of his mind as well as of his heart was written the legend, 
J^iJiil humanum mihi alienum j^uto. 

This, then, became the problem of his political life : how to 
gain the assent of the majority to keep slavery within existing 
limits. To this end he resorted to political methods. Here 
he differed from Garrison and Phillips. All honor to them 
that they quickened the conscience and enlarged the moral 

*NoTE. — I am permitted to publish the following passnge of a let- 
ter recently received from Hon. Richard Mott, of Toledo, Ohio: 

" It was in 1829 or 1830, while he was teaching school in Washing- 
ton, that he began the crusade to " denationalize" slavery by its abol- 
ishment in the District of Columbia. Petitions from his pen to that 
end were printed and circulated largely through the Northern States, 
wherever parties could be found to obtain signatures, at which among 
others I was diligently engaged, then living in the city of New York. 
Nearly thirty years afterwards a printer in Washington who set up the 
types told me of the authorship." 



sense of the people, helping thus to recruit the army of work- 
ers led by Chase, and Seward, and Sumner. But Garrison 
and Phillips neither scared nor hurt the South ; they only en- 
raged it. They lived to see the Union they detested, and the 
Constitution they abhorred, saved by the methods they had de- 
nounced as immoral. No, the real glory of emancipation be- 
longs to others, to the Frcesoilers, as they preferred to call 
themselves ; the causa eausans was political Abolitionism. 
Chase, too, lived till the crisis had passed and the land was 
free ; not compelled to retrace a step or retract an opinion ; 
freed by political methods, by party action, by the election of 
Abraham Lincoln, Avhich, by threatening to stay the extension 
of slavery, drove it to arms, and made possible its eradication 
by tlie triumphs of war, consummated in written law by the 
adoption of the Thirteenth Constitutional Amendment, 

So, too, Chase founded on the Tenth Amendment his denial of 
the constitutionality of the fugitive slave laws of 1793 and 1850. 
In borrowing, from the articles of confederation, the clause 
giving to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of 
each State full faith and credit in every other, the framers of the 
Constitution had thought it necessary to add a provision confer- 
ring upon the Congress express pow'er to enforce this by gen- 
eral laws. They had also borrowed, from the same source, the 
article relating to fugitives from justice, but omitted to grant 
legislative power for its enforcement. They had adopted a 
like provision for the return of fugitives from servitude, and 
here again failed to add a grant of legislative powder. And, 
in each of these, the duty was imposed, not upon federal, but 
upon state agencies only. Therefore, argued the future Chief- 
Justice, these clauses confer treaty powers only, establish re- 
lations of compact, depending for their sanction upon the acts 
of the States, and do not warrant federal interference. 

These views he emphasized by applying the proposition of 



10 

' Mr. Calhoun, which, after all, is mere historical fact, that the 
Constitution ^vas made by States — proposed by States, ratified 
by States — taking effect, it is true, upon people as avcII as 
States, creating " an indcstructiljle union of indestructible 
States," and to that end, as well as for the promotion of the 
benign purposes enunciated in the Declaration of Independ- 
ence and the pream])lc to the Constitution, establishing a nation 
and a govei-niucnt, but a government of defined powers, within 
close limitations, all other and non-stated powers being re- 
served to the States, the autliors of the Constitution, and to 
their people. Among these granted powers, he found none"to 
justify Congress in extending slavery beyond, or interfering 
with it Avithin the States, or enabling Congress to dictate to 
the States how they should obey the mandate for the return 
of fugitives from slavery. 

And, again, if defeated in this, he was ready, following his 
favorite thought that interpretation and construction must be 
for liberty, to fall back upon the Seventh Amendment and the 
principles of the common law, and to insist that the right of 
ti-ial l)y jury could not be witlidrawn from any man, black or 
white, to the control of whose person another man might as- 
sert superior title. 

And in maintaining the sovereign reserved power of Ohio 
over the statm of all dwellers or sojourners upon her soil, he 
claimed for his beloved State the same high dignity Lord 
Mansfield asserted for Great Britain. Here, too, when the 
slave touches free soil, when a steixmer carrying slave freight 
lands at an Ohio wharf, the shackles fall, the man is free. 

These were the lines of political thought in which the active 
life of Salmon P. Chase was cast. To secure their predomi- 
nance was the task set upon him ; to maintain their justice 
had been given him from above the ten talents of his large 
mental powers and moral forces ; to return these at the end 



11 

with others added, with this work consummated, Avas the su- 
preme effort of his days. For this he bore obloquy, and passed 
many years of darkness. By this, — Oh ! thank God ! for a na- 
tion delivered, a race emancipated, a Union restored, — by this, 
he came at last to days of mercy and of light and of well- 
earned honor. 

To maintain these views he devoted pen, voice, life, without 
fee or reward. His legal services were freely bestowed in the 
protection of every fugitive slave and the defense of his friends. 
He Avas a walking arsenal of the law of liberty. What he 
could not do with the writ of habeas corpus no man might ac- 
complish. His weapons were ever ready for instant serv- 
ice. They required no burnishing, no loading ; with or with- 
out time for preparation, they were always at hand for use. 
This office he never refused ; this duty he never neglected. 

And this in a town which had destroyed James G. Birney's 
press, and mobbed and maltreated negroes because they Avere 
free ; in a State where, from 1806 until 1849, no black or 
mulatto could bear competent witness in any court against a 
white, in which the visible admixture of color had come to be 
considered a moral and social taint, so that an infusion of 
black blood Avas treated by statute laAV as a dangerous disease, 
and those so infected Avere not permitted to vote, or if they came 
Avithin the description " black or mulatto," might not hiAvfully 
dAvell for more than tAventy days Avithout giving bond, Avith 
freehold security, for their support. 

In this community this man, young in years, but Avith ^ sage 
counsels old," Avith the aid of tAvo great men (Samuel LcAvis 
and Gamaliel Bailey),^' supported by but fcAV associates, and 

* XoTE. — Perhaps the name of James G. Bu-iiey should have been 
added here. I never saw him, and do not know whether his men- 
tal gifts corresponded to liis great moral force. His accomplished 
son, General William Birney, is, I am told, about to publish his 



12 

they in the main obscure persons, started a political party to 
check the growth of slavery. This, too, Avhen their future 
allies were yet grinding in tlie bondage of Whig or Demo- 
cratic servitude, when Hale was still a New Hampshire Demo- 
crat of the school of Isaac Hill, Seward, the Whig Gov- 
ernor of New York, Greeley, the Whig editor, and Sum- 
ner, a young lawyer, more busied in editing Judge Story's 
decisions upon the circuit than in the great cause to which he 
afterward gave health and life. Yes, started a political party 
to check the growtli of slavery, an institution two hundred 
years old in this country ; to curb the pride and th^vart the 
supposed interests of great States and peoples ; to arrest the 
development of the domestic institutions of fifteen sovereign 
Commonwealths, with the conscious purpose, the avowed hope, 
of ultimately revolutionizing them. Audacious attempt ! It 
seemed the revolt of pigmies against giants, Lilliput in war 
AvithBrobdingnag, a rebellion against law and order and nature, 
an attempt, safe only because insignificant, to alter the courses 
of the stars. Received at first with derision : " Ha! ha ! the 
silly fools," said public opinion ; " cranks '' they would have 
been called, had the vocabulary of to-day been then in vogue ; 
then met with anger and violence. " I am not mad, most 
noble Festus," Chase might have replied, " but speak forth the 
words of truth and soberness." No, they Avere not mad nor 
bad. History, sitting calm and serene upon the throne of 
judgment, has already spoken. These men Avere in the right — 
principles and methods alike right. Their appeal Avas to 
reason ; it Avas met with war. These men Avere in the right, 
and nobly so. They were of the kindred of the gods ; — 
made in the image of their divine Creator ; — filled with the 

life, and thus will be soon corrected any error I may have made in 
this omission. He is certainly entitled to the credit of having seen 
the necessity of independent political action sooner than any man in 
the United States. 



13 

spirit of their divine lineage ; —their madness has become and 
is to-day hxw, the fountain and source of untold blessino-g; 
has brought liberty to the slave, chastity to his family, happi- 
ness and new life to the homes of master and servant alike. 

For liberty is making a new North and a new South, alien- 
ated no longer, working together in love. Time may be 
required for the full realization of its bounteous gifts, but 
already and before the close of the first quarter century since 
the end of the war, we see not the faint glimmerings of dawn, 
but the full promise of morning, ushering in the meridian 
splendor of the day of jubilee. 

I have said that Mr. Chase could not convince himself of 
the existence of any legal power given by the Constitution to 
abolish slavery. This led in 1850 to a distinct change in his 
political relations. Beginning life as a Whigj-i" rather as the 
result of early teaching and personal associations than other- 
wise, for he was never friendly to Mr. Clay's doctrine of 
protection, he had gradually entered into sympathy with the 
social ideas which underlie the political philosophy of the 
Democratic party, and upon all points except those relating to 
slavery, and chiefly because of his views of the equality of 
man, was, when I first knew him, quite in accord Avith the 
political principles of Thomas Jefferson and his successors, 
the Democratic statesmen of that day. Slavery alone divided 

* Note. — The Whigs of Cincinnati used to reproach Mr. Chase for 
leaving tlieii- party, assigning as a reason that he had been disappointed 
in liis political aspirations. I learn from Hon. Rufus King, who was 
then a law student in his office, that Mr. Chase was a candidate for the 
Whig nomination for State Senator, and was defeated in the nominat- 
ing convention, principally at the instigation of his brother-in-law, H. 
H. Southgate, upon the avowed and open ground that he was an Abo- 
litionist. II ow notice could have been more distinctly given to Chase 
that there was no place in the W'hig pai'ty of Ohio, for him or his prin- 
ciples, 1 fail to see. 



14 



tlicm. A gulf wide enough, indeed. In tliis faith thereafter 
he lived — in this faith he died. To him the liherty of the 
individual was the one thing politically needful ; all else was 
to keep the peace and leave mankind to free self-development, 
without governmental interference, whose fostering attempts 
he considered more likely to obstruct than to forward liuinan 
progress. This course of thought made it easy f(»r him to 
favor the alliance made at Buffalo, in 1848, with Mr. Tilden and 
General Dix, to support the candidacy of Mr. Van Buren for 
the Presidency, and to accept his own election to the Senate 
by Democratic votes in 1840. But, in 1850, the Liberty party 
of Ohio nominated the Rev. Edward Smith for Governoi- upon 
a platform espousing the theory of Congressional power to 
abolish slavery within the States. Mr. Chase was not present 
at the convention, but he gave his warm approval to his young 
partner, who, in his name, had denounced the platform upon 
the spot. This platform was a ncAv departure, antagonizing Mr. 
Chase's most settled convictions of the limits set by the Con- 
stitution to the powers of Congress, dangerous because involv- 
ing a latitudinarianism likely in the then temper of the public 
mind to result in aggressions upon liberty rather than to forward 
the cause of emancipation. It led to his open affiliation, for a 
time, Avith the Democratic party of Ohio, whose platform had 
for years contained a pledge of active effort to mitigate the 
evils of slavery, arrest its spread, and, as far as the Constitu- 
tion might permit, assist in its eradication. 

What factor determined this course of life? What ele- 
ment of character sustained this young man in his advance 
movement, apparently so hopeless, certainly so far beyond 
current thought ? What kept him in hope and stimulated his 
energies in the face of political and even social isolation, of 
the loss of the good-Avill of neighbors, of probable exile 
from fortune and the gratification of his high ambition? He 



15 

could not foresee his gi-eat future. What made him content 
to be the best hated man in Cincinnati, to bear opprobrium, 
to stand (as he once did) by the side of General Thomas Kilby 
Smith, and meet volleys of stale eggs, while he calmly con- 
tinned his plea for justice to the slave ? He was not helped 
in his work by malice, or hatred, or spite, the stimulus of little 
and mean men. When I made his acquaintance, his most in- 
timate friend was a Kentucky slave-owner.* He made war on 
the system, not the men, knowing full well that any life, his 
own even, caught Avithin the folds of slavery, must submit to 
the crushing of its free thought, and its errors be largely, if 
not Avholly, excused by the impossibility of escaping the con- 
trol of circumstance, education, interests, surroundino-s. 

Wliat helped him, yes, made him, was this : He walked with 
God. The predominant element in his life, that whicdi o-ave 
tone and color to his thoughts and determined the direction 
of all he did, was striving after righteousness. I do not 
refer to his theology, his theories of the Divine nature. He 
could as easily work with a Unitarian, or Quaker, or free-tliinker 
as with a member of his own cliurch. The ri^lit to free 
thought upon the greatest of topics, which he claimed for him- 
self, he conceded to all, ne\er even pressing his influence in 
such matters upon the youngest and most immature of his 
associates. He was alike the friend of Theodore Parker and 
of Charles P. Mcllvaine. He was a communicant and at- 
tached member of the Protestant Episcopal Cliui'ch, of which 
his uncle, Philander, in whose family and under whose tutelage 
he passed part of his boyhood a£ Worthington, in Ohio, Avas 
not only a bishop, but a strong bishop. But I refer to the 
personal relations he believed himself to occupy toward the 
Divine powei-. 

To him God was not a name, but a living personal presence; 

*'XoTK. — The late Hamilton Smith, of Louisville. 



16 

not the author of a machine set in motion and then abandoned, 
but his companion and guide, ready to draw near Avhen sought 
in prayer, in meditation, in self-sacrifice, in good Avorks and 
right life. His God was liis master, daily and hourly bidding 
him be up and at Ilis work — trusting to him talents and oppor- 
tunities, not for self-gratification, but for use in tlic Divine 
warfare, the royal battle against temptation within and wrong 
without. Behind the dusky face of every black man he saw 
his Savior, the Divine man, also scourged, also a prisoner, at 
last crucified. That is what made liim wliat lie was. 

To this habit of referring to Divine guidance every act of his 
life, public and private, we owe the closing words of the 
proclamation of Emancipation, which Mr. Lincoln added from 
Chase's pen : 

••'And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, 
warranted by the constitution upon military necessity, I invoke 
the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor 
of Almighty God." 

He had dainty tastes, disliked the unclean in word or person, 
but he put his pleasure under his feet when duty led him to the 
rescue of tlie lowly. He had a large frame and mighty pas- 
sions, but they were under absolute control. Said one of his 
political enemies : " I liate liim, but I can not anger him." 
E. D. Mansfield, who, in behalf of the friends of Governor 
Trimble, Avrote the fierce and unjust appeal of the third party 
to the people against his election as Governor, in 1855, was 
appointed by him Commissioner of Statistics. This was not 
done to placate Mansfield. Chase was then successful, his 
enemies discomfited ; but Mansfield was fit for the place be- 
yond any other man in Ohio, and the call for his appointment 
was obeyed, not as a private pleasure, but as a public duty. 

Thus he was a man of poise ; not easily jostled from his 
bearings, ready for disturbing events, and the last to show dis- 



17 

composure or act with undue haste. I sat by liis side when 
the west wing of his residence on tlie Lower River road fell to 
the ground a mass of ruins. Not a nerve was agitated ; ap- 
parently his pulse beat no liigher than the moment before. 
He sat grave and imperturbable and calmly accepted the 
loss. The shock Avas met with the composure of habitual 
and complete self-control. In years of intimate intercourse 
I never saw him lose tempei-. Yet in his veins ran not one 
drop of cold blood. 

Daughters and friends, how well we knoAv this ! His heat 
was regulated, not wild and iinbalanced. Like that of the sun, 
it was life-giving — manifested in love and sacrifice, not pas- 
sion. 

His greatest personal success was in winning the hearts of 
the people, especially of the Whigs of Ohio. The events of 
1849 had greatly disturbed them. From being the object of 
local aversion, Mr. Chase had become the target for every ar- 
row of hate and scorn in the Whig quiver. Plis election to 
the Senate by a Legislature in which he had but two friends 
(or, at the most, three*) in full political sympathy, they called 
bargain and sale, and there are, perhaps, men still living who 
believe Mr. Chase's connection Avitli that transaction to have 
been personally dishonoring. But these are the few, the rare 
exceptions. 

I have personal knowledire that the most serious charere 
against him was untrue, viz : That to gain the object of his 
ambition he advocated the nullification of the law dividing this 
county into two districts for the election of Representatives to 
the General Assembly. I was then his clerk, m^^self in full 

* NoTK. — I am authorizeil to say that it was then known to Mr. 
Chase, Dr. Townsend and Colonel Morse, that Hon. A. G. Riddle, Rep- 
resentative i'rom Geauga county, now of Washington City, would vote 
-for-Mr. Chase on the next ballot. '• 



18 

S3^mpfithy Avitli tlic proposed resistance to tliis division, and I 
know that long before he fancied tliere was a ])ossibility that 
the Free Soil party couhl secure tlie bahmce of power in the 
General Assembly, liefore he had l)egun the speaking cam- 
paign in the northern counties which secured that result, his 
well settled opinion Avas, that under the Constitution of 1802 
there could be no division of counties by legislative apportion- 
ment. And more than one man now upon this platform knoAvs 
how willino; he was that the niime of Joshua R. Giddiniis should 
bo preferred to his own, if the Whigs Avould first come to the 
terms dictated by Di-. Townsend and Colonel Morse. 

But why delay to defend ti-ansactions u])on wliicdi the people 
of Ohio have pronounced final judgment ? Every prominent 
actor in those scenes received applause and rewards, not cen- 
sure. Of the leaders in the coalition which repealed the black 
laws and gave to Salmon P. Chase his first Senatorial commis- 
sion, Dr. Norton S. Townsend was re-elected to the Lejiisla- 
ture, elected to Congress, and now, in honored old age, fills a 
high post of useful duty as the senior Professor in the Ohio 
State University ; Colonel John F. Morse Avas re-elected to the 
General Assembly, and nnide its Speaker ; George E. Pugh 
likewise re-elected, was elected Attorney-General, made Mr. 
Chase's successor in the Senate ; Alexander Lonji; also re- 
elected, then sent to Congress ; — Stanley Matthews, Senator 
and Judge, are you ashamed of the part — not small — you took 
in the days of your yonth in a transaction Avhich constitutes 
not the least, in my opinion, of the many titles to honor you 
enjoy ? 

At last the people of Ohio— yes, even the Whigs of Ohio — 
and of this city and county, Avhose hearts were almost broken 
Avhen Salmon P. Chase was first elected Senator, were Avon 
over to the man. His second election as Governor, accomplished, 
it is true, by only fifteen hundred plurality, was, nevertheless, 



19 

a high triumph — not half so much over Henr}^ B. Payne and 
the Democracy as Avithin the Republican party, which by 
this time embraced nearly all his old antagnonists. In 1857 
he led a solid column, and in January, 1860, by the consensus 
of o])inion of the entire Republican party of Ohio, more than 
half of whose members had been, eleven years before, his bitter 
political, and many of whom supposed they were also his per- 
sonal foes, he received his second commission as Senator. 
There was no longer need of effort for his promotion. Press 
and people of his party with one accord called him to the same 
high public trust committed to him eleven years before with 
so much turmoil and clamor and division of sentiment. The 
same unanimity of approval attended Mr. Lincoln's designation 
of Mr. Chase as Secretary of the Treasury in 1861. By 
steadfastness he had won the prize he valued, the affection 
of the people of Ohio — not Ity fawning and flattery, by none 
of the arts of the demagogue, but by a virtuous life, and by 
wise and faithful service, and undaunted and persistent advoc- 
acy of a great cause. 

That his place in the Treasury Department was no bed of 
roses we all know. But he filled it. He was the power be- 
hind the army, without whom its array would have dis- 
solved. That dire necessity drove him to at least one expe- 
dient he disapproved, Ave know from his own lips. But who 
shall say that the use of the Nation's credit did not need the 
succor of the legal tender provision. It continues until now. 
Even now, in halcyon days of sunny peace, few and bold are 
they who propose to cancel the legal tender notes or withdraw 
their legal tender function. One thing may be said with as- 
sured certainty, both of the legal tender and national bank 
currency, devices to which he resorted; nearly twenty-five 
years have passed, but wliatever may be claimed of their indi- 
rect effect, no man has yet lost a dollar by their direct action, 



20 

or by the failure of this paper to serve the purposes of a safe 
currency. 

In his judicial service he was most fortunate In this : that it 
fell to the lot of the cmirt over Aviruli he ])resided, by decisions 
which he pronounced, to restore peace to the South. The war 
left a legacy of controversies to the ])eo})le of the Confederate 
States, for the adjustment of -which was needed, not the acu- 
men of the lawyer, but the wisdom of the jurist and states- 
man. He who looks through the Alal)ama reports from the 
48(1 to the 4()th volume will find three opinions, one from each 
of the tlirce Judges of the reconstructed Supreme Court of that 
State, as to the le<i;al Kfafus of legislation and iud<iments 
during the rebellion. Chief-Justice Peck held that the judg- 
ments of the State courts rendered during the war were like 
those of foreign tribunals, pr/wa/ac/e valid, but open to dispute, 
and creating no lien. Judge Peters hehl all legislative action 
taken during the war absolutely void until re-enacted after 
reconstruction, while -Judge Saffbld held the same valid, be- 
cause the work of a de facto government. 

For some years and until the decision of the cases of Texas 
V. White, and TJiormgton v. Smith, at the December term, 
18G8, of the Supreme Court of the United States, thei'c Avas 
legal confusion at the South. All legislation was open to dis- 
pute — the judgments of courts, the settlement of estates, the 
transfers of land, payments of Confederate money, Avere in 
controversy. One of the best law^yers in Alabama told me 
that there Avas a time after the Avar Avhen even good laAvyers 
Avere knoAvn to question the validity of marriages performed 
under licenses from a court sitting by authority of a rel)el- , 
lious State. This was the ninth plague, the plague of dark- 
ness, Avith no light in the dwellings. The victorious North 
had destroyed property, laid in Avaste cities and farms and 



21 

railroads, emancipated slaves, handed over the reins of gov- 
ernment to satraps and hirelings, said the South, and here Avas 
a new and greater disaster than all else — the ancient land- 
marks of right and law were removed and the reign of chaos 
and night inaugurated. 

Out of this wilderness of disorder and doubt, Chief-Justice 
Chase and his judicial associates led our country and its 
Southern peo})le, l)y the simple rule, authoritatively announced, 
that no transaction, public or ])rivate, during the rebellion, was 
invalid, unless it was either, first, in aid of the rebellion, or 
secondly, in derogation of the just rights of some loyal and 
adhering citizen. 

Havel painted the portrait of a radicals By no means. 
This man was no rash innovator, rushing in where angels fear 
to tread. By disposition and education he was a conservative. 
Ilis function Avas not that-of a destroyer, but a restorer. The 
emancipation of the slave destroyed no property, Avasted no 
substance, depopulated no cities, disturbed the peace of no 
household. The slave disappeared, but the freeman remained. 
The fictitious values represented by the power to place him 
upon the auction block Avere blotted from the statistics of 
property, but the same sums, and more, appeared among the 
figures of the values of liberty. The wan Avas still there, 
unchanged except in legal sfafuft and in the incentive to make 
himself more valuable to the State and to his family as a free- 
man. 

The Abolitionists did not propose or make Avar. Slavery 
fired on Sumter. Most of them Avould have gladly followed 
England's example, and paid for emancipation. The country 
thought differently once, but now it sees that the true conserva- 
tives Avere Lincoln and Seward and Chase and Sumner, the 
real radicals Yancey and Toombs and Mason and Davis. 

The interest of Mr. Chase in the o<dored race did not cease 



22 

■with the Avar; it attended the l)lnck man and assisted his com- 
plete enfranchisement. Ey his hist will, a relatively large 
proportion of a small estate, the sum of ^10,000, Avas left to 
Wilberforce University at Xenia, Ohio, for the education of 
younii' men and Avomen of color. l>ut lie hesitated, took time, 
Avas slow to come to the sujtport of the Fifteenth Amendment. 
He Avas a conservative, and to introduce to the 1)allot-box a 
race just emerged from chattel slavery and the darkness of 
crass ignorance seemed to him, as a friend of the race, an ex- 
periment of doiihtful result. He Avas a conservative, and 
preferred the more taidy ])rocesses of State action, })referred 
that this great change should take ]ilace after education had 
prepared the men of color for the ballot, and by the consent of 
the Southern Avhites. But he Avas no sentimentalist, and he kncAV 
that suffrage Avas an ultinmte necessity if ])olitical caste and })er- 
haps practical restoration to slavery Avere to l)e permanently 
avoided. Once convinced tliat his favorite scheme of State 
enfranchisement Avas impracticable, his doubts and hesitation 
A'anished. The Ohio Jjcgislature had rejected the amendment ; 
the people had refused to permit men of color in Ohio to vote. 
At the annual election of 18(11), by one of those curious muta- 
tions of public opinion. Avhich have been so common in this 
county, a hybrid ticket, half Democrats, half Republicans, Avas 
chosen to the Legislature, under the ])retcnce of reform, the 
trace of the accomplishment of Avhich, I need not say, are at 
this day but slight. But the Republican leaders of this move- 
ment Avere Mr. Chase's friemls, and over them he had bound- 
less influence. Upon the decision to be reached in Ohio 
seemed to depend the result. Tavo gentlemen noAv here pres- 
ent, Avho had not supported the successful ticket, visited Wash- 
ington, one of them tAvice, to urge the- Chief-Justice to exert 
his persuasive poAvers tOAvard procuring the adoption of the 
Fifteenth Amendment. He deliberated, presented to them 



23 

and to himself all sides and every view of the question. The 
res])onsibilitY rested on him, f(n- his jjersonal friends, thus 
chosen, held the power to adopt or defeat the ratification. At 
last he saw the duty clearly and acted with vigor. The letters 
addressed by him to Senator Thomas Henry Yeatman and Rep- 
resentative George H. Hill, urging their support of the amend- 
ment, which at his instance they gave, are still in existence. His 
weight thrown into the balance was decisive. Tliere were then 
thirty-seven States — twenty-five were needed — twenty-four had 
voted affirmatively ; on January 27, 1870, Ohio, the twenty- 
fifth State, ratified, and thus, through the personal persuasions 
of Salmon P. Chase, exerted at the right moment and Avith the 
right men, the consummation of emancipation was reached in 
the enfranchisement of the slave. Thus were settled, in his 
life-time, all questions of liberty ; thereafter economic discus- 
sion, questions of tariff, taxation, revenue, expenditure, were 
to be in order. In less than forty years the land that refused 
to listen to the appeal for liberty had freed the slave and 
placed the l^allot in his hands. Henceforward he must stand 
for his own right, a freeman, no longer a ward, his destinies 
within his own control. 

Six great men in civil an<l military executive office led the 
people of the United States to the destruction of the rebel- 
lion, and the restoration of the Union — Lincoln, Seward, 
Stanton, Chase, Grant, Slu'rman. Of these, four Avere natives 
or citizens of Ohio. "Well may our Commonwealth take ])v\de 
in the aidiievements of her sons. Yet in the Walhalla of the 
nation she has passed over all these and chosen two others, 
that imperishable marble may bear witness to her sense of 
their services to her. And this is well. For Chase, Stanton, 
(jrant, and Sherman belong not to Ohio, but to the nation, to 
the world. At Spring Grove and other cemeteries costly 
monuments attest the love of the livino; for the dead, or the 



24 

ostentation of the living. The names they bear will in a score 
or two of years be forgotten. Around the frieze of one of the 
great halls in the Ducal Palace at Venice are inscribed the 
names of forgotten chieftains, the A'euetiaii Doges, among 
them few, indeed, whose fauu' has reached this gi'iieration, and 
is known to citizen and stranger. Time covers with the kindly 
moss of oblivion all traces of obscure mortals. But when the 
name of Salmon Portland Chase shall be forgotten in the land 
whose Union he did so much to restore, ;nid by the descend- 
ants of those to wliom, master and servant alike, he secur('(l 
the greatest of nil blessings, liberty, — Union and lilx-rty, laws 
and lanofuajie will have nerisheil and tlie forest have i-esumed 
its swav over the works of man. 



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